Table of contents for Volume 2 2017 in Maximum PC Specials

Dedicated PC builders are inundated with potential parts and combinations that it’s sometimes a challenge just deciding what we actually want to build. Budgets are inevitably fluid, standards tend to creep higher and higher. We browse the Internet incessantly, always looking for the perfect potential part, never quite getting the nerve to hit ‘buy’ because, well, what if we manage to get a better deal? This second volume of Build It comes fully equipped with how-to guides and hands-on projects that are sure to help our readers in their quest to build the perfect PC. This guide is for those of you just starting out on your PC building journey and computer tech veterans alike. This is a hobby for some, and an obsession for others: whichever side of the…

AOC U3477PQU Six hundred bucks, but still a bargain What to make of AOC’s slick, superwide U3477PQU? It comes down to your point of view. If you’re a serious player in the true high end of the monitor market, it’s not going to be on your radar. But if you want to get a slice of the high-end action at a more attainable price, slap it on your shortlist. It all starts with the 34-inch LCD panel. It’s a proper IPS item. It’s also 34 inches across the diagonal, and packs a 3440x1440 pixel punch. For most mere mortals, that’s plenty. The 21:9 aspect ratio also adds an element of the exotic. AOC has done a nice job of giving the chassis and stand a quality consumer electronics vibe, too.…

Let’s begin with a note of clarity and candor. There is much about Intel’s new seventh-generation Core processor family, codenamed Kaby Lake, that makes us want to do bodily harm to the leading maker of PC processors with a boxed copy of Windows 98. Because Kaby Lake is yet another incremental step that tops out with four cores in desktop trim, and is overwhelmingly optimized for mobile PCs. There are no radical new architectural changes, no promises of revolutionized performance. It feels as though Intel has been rolling out updates like Kaby Lake for years and years now, safe in the knowledge that its only rival, AMD, simply cannot compete with it. And yet Kaby Lake actually looks kind of cool. It’s not cool in the old-school sense of shaking…

At first glance, the Windows PowerShell looks to be a facsimile of the Command Prompt, but to dismiss it as such leaves you missing a huge trick. In fact, PowerShell is a platform designed to automate many Windows tasks through a clever scripting language. It’s based on the .NET Framework, which gives it lots of flexibility and scope, particularly when you access it through the PowerShell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment) program, which provides even more useful tools and shortcuts—such as syntax highlighting and IntelliSense tab completion—to help you build the perfect script to achieve what you want. If you’ve already dabbled with the Command Prompt—and .bat batch files in particular—you’re already well on the road to getting to grips with PowerShell. Many familiar commands work in PowerShell, too—thanks to a…

By default, everything that you set up in PowerShell— variables, functions, and other customizations, such as the color of warning messages—is lost when you close the current session. If you would like to preserve this across multiple sessions, you will need to create a new profile. First, display the path to the Windows PowerShell profile by simply typing: This reveals that the profile will reside in your Documents folder, while the second command returns a value of “False,” indicating that the profile doesn’t yet exist. To create a profile, type: Type the following to open it in Notepad: A blank document is opened, ready for you to record your variables and other customizations. For example, to change the warning message as outlined in the main text, add the following three…

You’ll need this A WINDOWS PC Running Windows 7, 8, or 10. WHY IS IT that your PC always seems to develop problems at the most inopportune moments? While Windows is pretty good at fixing its own problems, there are still frustrating times when its own built-in tools, from self-healing to troubleshooters, fail to do the job. There’s still no substitute for the self-help approach, and one of the best tools for this is the Event Viewer. It’s where you’ll find Windows’ log files, a record of everything that’s going on, including symptoms of problems both evident and still hidden away. By carefully examining these logs, you can find out what’s causing all kinds of glitches, from obvious—if cryptic—error messages to more vague issues, such as sluggish behavior or periodic…

YOU’LL NEED THIS AFFINITY PHOTO PUBLIC BETA Download the software from http://affinity.serif.com. A RAW IMAGE FILE Your smartphone might oblige. IF YOU HAVE a Digital SLR camera or advanced compact, you might have wondered what the “raw” image quality setting is about. Or you may know all about it, and are squinting your eyes at this patronizing opening paragraph. A raw capture is a simple dump of the information gathered by your camera sensor, with no processing applied, other than that needed to turn it into a PC-readable file. No noise reduction, no additional sharpening, and no compression. This can be a big advantage. Shooting in raw shifts the burden of processing your images from your camera to your PC, where you can manually affect the process with software such…

Its full name, Uncomplicated Firewall, might sound modest, but Ufw is a powerful firewall, and can be used to block access to certain websites. Although, technically, you can also do this with Dnsmasq, this would be a form of “DNS hijacking,” which is a rather dastardly procedure, usually carried out by scammers. The advantage of using Ufw is that it blocks domains by IP address. This means you have to write down only one rule per address, rather than remember the various domains and subdomains used by sites. Imagine trying to block every variant of Facebook.com, for instance: fb.com, m.facebook.com, the list goes on. It stands to reason, then, that in order to block websites by IP address, you need that information. Open Terminal on your Pi, or connect via…

A NEW HOPE AMD’s new Zen CPU takes aim at the Intel empire Not to put too fine a point it, but expectations are nothing if not high for AMD’s Zen CPU architecture. We’ve previously branded it as being everything from a new hope to AMD’s absolute last chance for survival. And as we look forward to 2017’s tech, the year Zen finally arrived, it feels every bit as portentous as all that—Zen is a really big deal. That’s chiefly because competition improves the breed, and ever since AMD launched its failed Bulldozer architecture back in 2011, Intel hasn’t really had any competition in the PC processor market. The consequence of that has been a state of general stagnation in terms of mainstream CPU performance on the desktop. Intel’s processors…

Hopefully, you’re making good use of File History or Windows Backup to ensure your critical files are kept safe and sound. Both methods store multiple versions of your backups, giving you the option of rolling back the changes with individual files should you wish to restore an earlier version. This protection comes with a price, however—increased consumption of drive space. If you’re feeling the squeeze, reclaim some breathing room by removing the oldest backups. Right-click the “Start” button and choose “Control Panel.” File History users should click “Save backup copies of your files with File History,” then click “Advanced settings.” You can change the frequency of backups (to reduce drive consumption going forward), plus set a time limit for how long backups are kept (“Until space is needed” is safest,…

The act of running multiple programs (never mind numerous background processes) is a delicate one, requiring a fine balance to keep everything running smoothly. It doesn’t always work, which is why your PC may sometimes seemingly grind to a halt or act sluggishly for a few minutes. If you’re running Windows 10 on an older PC or low-powered tablet or laptop device, you may find it frequently sticks, due to the competing demands of different processes. One solution is to scale back what you do— keep open programs to a minimum, and trim startup back, too. If this doesn’t help, then downloading and installing the Free version of Process Lasso (https://bitsum.com/processlasso) will, and it can even help on more powerful setups as well. When prompted, leave the default options as…

No new CPU core design. No additional CPU cores, for that matter. What is there in Kaby Lake to please desktop enthusiasts? Probable support for DRM-sensitive 4K stream services, such as Netflix, could be a major boon. We wouldn’t kick the additional PCI Express lanes out of bed, either. There’s reason to think Kaby Lake might be quite the overclocking tool, too. But as a package, it’s hardly the stuff of enthusiasts’ dreams. As ever, then, its real appeal is likely to be as a mobile processor. Of course, mobile PCs with Kaby Lake processors have been available since the fall of 2016. The impact of the chip’s improved efficiency has been real enough. When Dell revised its popular XPS 13 laptop to add Kaby Lake chips, claimed battery life…

We’re featuring the most recent release of PowerShell—version 5.1—and it comes preinstalled with the latest version of Windows 10. All you need to do is launch it, either from the Start menu’s “All Apps” list, or by typing “powershell” into the “Search” box. You can then right-click its Taskbar icon and choose “Pin to Taskbar” for a convenient shortcut going forward. Windows 8 and 8.1 users currently use PowerShell 4. If you want to upgrade to version 5.1, simply download the correct version—x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit)—from https:// msdn.microsoft.com/enus/ powershell/wmf/5.1/ install-configure. Doubleclick it, and follow the installation prompts. Windows 7 ships with an even older version of PowerShell, dating back to 2009. To upgrade that, you first need to verify the .NET Framework 4.5.2 is installed (a link to it…

YOU’LL NEED THIS TEAM VIEWER Grab the app from www.teamviewer.com. TEAMVIEWER IS AN application that enables you to view—and remotely control—another computer. Not just any old computer, however; the machine you’re connecting to must have the client software installed, and approve your connection—this isn’t an app for hackers. The link between the two computers is also encrypted, so no one can spy on what you’re doing. There are mobile apps, too, so you can complete a task on your home PC—left running and logged in—from a hotel room half the world away. All you need is your smartphone and some Wi-Fi. TeamViewer is useful for training—you can allow your students to view your PC as you carry out the task you’re teaching them. Or you can broadcast a presentation to…

YOU’LL NEED THIS RASPBERR Y PI The brilliant mini-computer costs under $50. See www.raspberrypi.org. YOU PROBABLY REMEMBER the news. In December 2016, it was reported that the infamous Mirai worm had infected a substantial number of routers used by customers of UK ISP TalkTalk, stealing their Wi-Fi passwords. The worm exploited the default admin passwords that are hardwired into a number of machines, and although the focus was on enslaving devices to take part in DOS (Denial of Service) attacks, the implications are staggering. Even those handfuls of users who take the trouble to change their router’s default passwords seldom bother to use firewalls. In plain English, this means your router’s settings, and theoretically devices on your home wireless network, could be laid bare by attackers. Fortunately, the Raspberry Pi…

It’s a great time t o b e a P C g amer. The c onsole b attles f or audience (and the fact that they are essentially cheap PCs inside anyway), along with the utter saturation of the smartphone game market, mean that publishing games on PC is the safest, easiest bet developers can make. For the consumer, that means that anything and everything you want to play is on PC—except if some lunatic at a console company has dropped a million or two on buying a temporary exclusive. Indeed, the number of games that are released on Steam every year has grown so much that it always exceeds the total number of games from previous years—and that’s happened consistently for the last three years. We’ve made a list…

Imagine with us: The worst has happened. Everything you held dear is gone. You ignored the clicking of the hard drive, those error messages, that suspicious-looking file for too long. You clicked the thing you shouldn’t have clicked. You emptied the Recycle Bin out of habit after letting your kids near your PC. And now? Now your photos are gone, your documents are dust, those precious family videos cast to the wind. Windows has gasped its last breath. All is lost. Except that isn’t necessarily the case. Data has a habit of hanging around. And if you’re very lucky, and very careful, you could—in this hypothetical scenario —get all, or the vast majority, of your data back. Note that we’re not going to be able to help you a huge…

RAID drives, as you might imagine, can be tricky beasts to recover data from, and certain configurations introduce issues of their own. Run a striped set in RAID 0 formation, for example, and you’re asking for trouble— yes, you’ll have some of the fastest storage going, but if one of your drives goes down, you’re stuck. There are various options that claim to be able to recover files from RAIDs 0, 5, and 10—ReclaiMe (www.freeraidrecovery.com) is the most prominent—but don’t hold your breath for any decent results. On the flipside of the coin, RAID 1 and similar mirrored configurations positively aid in data recovery; if one of your drives goes down, you may need to invest a little time and money in remirroring with a new drive, but catastrophic failure is…

Where the heck are Intel’s mainstream six-core (or more) CPUs? Generation after generation, Intel wheels out new chips, but at best they have four cores. Enthusiasts seeking more cores have had to move to Intel’s altogether more expensive enthusiast socket and platform to access more cores Problem is, platforms such as X99 and the LGA2011 socket are thinly disguised server technology. That means cost and complexity of entirely no relevance to desktop PCs. Far more preferable would be for Intel to chuck a few more cores into its mainstream LGA1151 socket. Of course, some would argue that CPU performance is already good enough, that the focus for performance improvement should be elsewhere. And it’s true that many applications don’t require additional CPU performance— or, rather, the type of performance they…

There’s plenty of help— offline and online—waiting for you with PowerShell. The obvious place to start is with its own built-in help tools. Type the following: Replace “cmdlet” with your cmdlet’s or alias’s name. You’ll receive a prompt that the more detailed help files require installing, but to avoid a string of error messages, first close and restart PowerShell as an administrator, then type: A green progress bar appears, and then the files are added, one module at a time—don’t be surprised to end with an error message or two, which can be safely ignored. Close and restart PowerShell again. Now the help files have been replaced, use the following command: You can add some handy parameters: “-detailed” (“Get-Help cmdlet -detailed”) provides a list of all available parameters for that…

You’ll need this NCRYPTED CLOUD The free account contains all the functionality you need. SUPPORTED CLOUD ACC OUNT nCrypted Cloud currently works with OneDrive, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and Egnyte. EVER WONDERED JUST how secure your data is when you upload it to the cloud? Providers such as OneDrive and Dropbox make a big song and dance about the fact your data is encrypted, but who holds the all-important encryption keys? If those keys are stored with your data, as is the case with most cloud providers, it leaves one glaring weakness in your secure backup plan. If you’re serious about protecting your data, you need to add extra layers of encryption to it that aren’t left in the hands of your cloud storage provider. nCrypted Cloud separates your encryption…

You’ll need this BITWARDEN Head to https://bitwarden.com. SOMETHING TO PROTECT An Internet-connected PC and smartphone. We all know we shouldn’t re-use passwords, but with so many websites requiring user accounts, creating a different, secure, memorable login for each is all but impossible. That’s before you consider how you’re going to change them regularly (a policy enforced by some companies). This leads to an problem: If someone can crack the password for one of your accounts, it can open the door to many others. That’s where password managers come in, storing all your account details in a central location, and automatically completing login screens so you don’t have to remember them yourself (or jot them down on sticky notes). The password vault is secured by a single master password, which is…

1.REMOTE CONTROL This is the username and password needed to connect to your PC. You must pass the details to the person connecting. 2.UNATTENDED ACCESS If you’re setting up a server or other machine that’s always on, you can configure this so it doesn’t need a user. 3.CONTROL REMOTE COMPUTER This is where you put the user ID of a remote computer you want to control. The password pops up in a separate box. 4.COMPUTERS & CONTACTS A list of all the computers in your TeamViewer group. They can chat, video-conference, and share files. 5.RIGHT-CLICK MENU Right-click one of the computers in your list to see a menu of all the options for interacting with it. 6.NOTIFICATIONS Notifications for things such as file transfers pop up here in the bottom…

YOU’LL NEED THIS PHOTOSHOP Available from www.adobe.com. MONOCHROME IMAGE Scour your family collection ONCE, THE WORLD was black and white. Created by MGM for The Wizard of Oz (a film cruelly overlooked at the Oscars in favor of Gone With the Wind, which invented wind), color wouldn’t become mainstream technology until halfway through the 20th century, and even then pockets of resistance lingered, where people refused to install the relevant upgrades, claiming that monochrome was good enough, and that they didn’t trust the free update not to give their eyes typhoid. Pity the PC owner in this world of perpetual twilight. The twinkling LEDs in his keyboard could only show shades of gray, Hercules made all graphics cards (they were fairly high res though), and people weren’t really certain about…

Once enabled, Ufw automatically launches on startup, blocking all incoming connections, and allowing all outgoing ones. This might not be the ideal setup for you, particularly if you like to connect to your Pi via SSH or VNC. To configure Ufw, use Terminal on your Pi. Ufw recognizes most services like SSH, so in most cases you can enable access using ufw allow . For instance: To see a full list of services you can enable in this way, simply run the following command: If your service isn’t listed, you can simply open the port it uses. For instance, RealVNC, which can be used to connect remotely to the Pi’s desktop, runs on Port 5800. To have Ufw open it, run: To allow connections only from a specific IP address,…